Defending the TrumpRx Scam, RFK Jr. Absurdly Claims Trump Has ‘His Way of Calculating’ Percentages
Yves here. No matter how bad you think Trump is, it’s pretty bad. RFK, Jr. he continues (like many Trump appointees) to embarrass himself by trying to defend Trump’s false claims, as opposed to trying to distance himself from them. Here, the topic is that Trump’s claims of lowering drug prices are so great that the only way to be accurate would be if the government paid for patients to take them.
Focusing on Trump’s poor math skills obscures a point made by Elizabeth Warren below: that the TrumpRx purportedly forcing TrumpRx in fact often sells drugs at prices higher than those currently on the market.
By Brad Reed, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published on Common Dreams
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday tried to defend President Donald Trump’s mathematically absurd claims about prescription drug prices by saying the president has his own way of calculating percentages.
During the trial of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) blasted Kennedy about the president’s repeated false claims that he has slashed prescription drug prices by 600%, which would mean pharmaceutical companies paying consumers to take their drugs.
“President Trump has his own way of calculating,” Kennedy replied. “There are two ways to calculate percentages. If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.
RFK Jr: “President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you bring it down to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” pic.twitter.com/MjDNADqc8p
– Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 22, 2026
In fact, such a price drop would represent a 98.3% drop, which is less than one-sixth the size of the president’s request. A 600% reduction in the price of a $600 drug would mean that the drug manufacturer pays consumers $3,000 for every prescription.
Kit Yates, a mathematician at the University of Bath, was surprised by Kennedy’s efforts to create an alternative version of arithmetic.
“We’ve known for some time that the current government of the USA wanted science, but I never thought they would try to mess with math!” Yates wrote on social media. “You can’t redefine how you calculate percentages.”
In addition to exposing Kennedy’s ignorance of basic math, Warren highlighted how the TrumpRx website misled consumers into thinking they were being offered deals on prescription drugs available elsewhere in generic forms.
At one point, Warren noted that TrumpRx is selling a brand-name heartburn drug for $200, while a generic version of the same drug is available at Costco for $16. Warren also highlighted a heart arrhythmia drug sold at TrumpRx for $336, although a generic version of the drug is available at Costco for $12.
Warren added that, in exchange for making certain brand-name drugs available on the TrumpRx website, pharmaceutical companies received a 100% exemption from the president’s tax on imported patent-pending drugs.
“Think about that: Big Pharma makes billions of dollars in tax cuts by listing their drugs on TrumpRx, and they don’t even reduce the cost of most of these drugs,” he said. “That’s a huge advantage for Big Pharma.”
Warren’s analysis of the TrumpRx pricing system echoes a March report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which found that the president’s drug website offers really low prices for “one” of the 54 drugs on the list.
CAP also found that nearly one-third of the drugs available on the TrumpRx website had generic alternatives that were cheaper than those offered, and that the website made no mention of this.
Reuters reported in December that at least 350 drugs are set for price increases by 2026, including “Covid, RSV, and shingles vaccines,” and “blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance.”
Later in the hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) mocked Kennedy by saying that, under Trump’s leadership, “Americans are now paying the world’s lowest cost of prescription drugs.”
“That’s a ridiculous statement,” Sanders said. “Nobody in the world believes that.”
